Large Fierce Mammal

INTRODUCTION

“Cracks in the Foundation” refers to those parts of the societal fabric so rickety that they have widened to the point where most can no longer be plugged even by something as magnificently huge as the ass of the elephant in the room.

It is these that have attracted the investigative efforts of the LFM Home Office Of Pestilential and Legal Affairs (HOOPLA), and what you will read today is but a small result of the ongoing efforts of that august body.

Before we begin, I will put before you, Goode Reader, the following three axioms that I will posit as True:

1. In the course of a long life, the Wise Man will be prepared to abandon his luggage several times.
2. In pursuit of happiness, do not offer disrespect to anyone who will be cutting your hair or handling your food.
3. If your customers don’t complain about your prices now and then, you aren’t charging enough.

PREVIOUSLY ON “CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION“

Cracks in the Foundation — The Matter of a “Living Wage”: Part the First

Cracks in the Foundation — The Matter of a “Living Wage”: Part the Second

PROLOGUE

be·ta test

noun

a trial of machinery, software, or other products, in the final stages of its development, carried out by a party unconnected with its development.

verb

subject (a product) to a beta test.
“the system was still being beta-tested for practical music applications”

Definition from Oxford Languages

The Grand Beta Test is yet another subset of our greater Cracks in the Foundation series. What you will read today is the first episode of that subset which deals with the development and deployment of vaccines for “immunization” against COVID-19, government involvement and salesmanship, spin doctors, and societal division.

TODAY’S BROADCAST

Source here.

I had occasion recently to extend birthday greetings by way of a telephone call to a gent of our acquaintance. Among wide ranging topics discussed in the course of the ensuing hour, he disclosed his personal disinclination to receive any of the vaccines currently on offer as immunization against COVID-19; not any vaccine as a matter of principle mind you, only those presently available; and further went on to relate an experience of some few days prior in which he found his choice, and he himself, reduced to the status of a label, the implications of which I have previously defined:

“A label can be a physical object that, when applied to another object, conveys important information about it. What it is, who made it, what it’s made of, how to use it, how long it may be kept, and the best means of storage before use or consumption. Things like that. These sorts of labels abound in today’s world and are vital to navigating the perils and pitfalls of acquiring and using the commodities we take for granted to feed ourselves and our families, clean our homes, ourselves, and possessions, and maintain our surroundings. To wipe our bums and blow our noses. Cure a headache.

“And then there’s the other kind of label. This kind also abounds in today’s world, but less as a means of conveying important information than as a short cut around understanding. Understanding requires a desire for knowledge, and a willingness to be observant. To study, think, and draw conclusions. Unlike labels of any description, these attributes are not common in the world. If this type of label is applied to a controversial thing – a firearm for example – or worse yet, a person, the label alone comes to replace the true substance of that to which it’s applied. That’s how we get terms like “gun violence” for example, flying in the face of the fact that violence doesn’t come in flavours, and notwithstanding the implement that is used to bring it about, there is only violence, and it springs exclusively from the mind of its perpetrator

“Similarly, there is no ‘gay love’ or ‘straight love’, there is only love. There is no ‘gay marriage’ or ‘mixed marriage’, there is only marriage. There are no ‘women’s rights’ or ‘gay rights’, there are only rights. In not one of these examples is there justification for tagging violence, love, marriage, or rights with a qualifying label branding it as something different from every other expression of it. The term ‘racial hatred’ doesn’t define a special brand of hatred. There is only hatred, and ‘racial’ is the excuse for its existence – a label. The same goes for ‘religious intolerance'”. ~ Worldly Wisdom Wednesday — Beware of Labels

Under circumstances now lost in antiquity, our man once experienced a nearly crippling workplace injury from which he fortuitously recovered, but that left him needful of regular physical therapy to maintain full functionality. That person, a local practitioner, has not changed from the beginning, and with time has come friendly familiarity; but friendly or not, don’t forget what is said of the breeding proclivities of familiarity.

In the course of conversation prior to commencement of his most recent session, the therapist asked if he had received a COVID-19 vaccination to which he replied in the negative, for reasons aforesaid.

Her reply: “Oh. You’re one of those.”

Incensed, he responded, “What is that supposed to mean? One of what!?”

One of what indeed.

From the beginning of the current pandemic, governments have preached that the One True Path to Salvation lay in two absolutes beholden upon the citizenry:

1. adherence to public health guidelines; and
2. patience as vaccines were developed and readied so there could be vaccinations for all.

These demands engendered an almost overnight change in the mind geography of the nation.

“There is a term I like to use that I learned long ago from a Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian Army – mind geography. The things we rely on without thinking, that are so reliably there for us we treat them as constants; we build our mind geography from those. Intelligent people though I know all reading these words today to be, who of you hasn’t walked into a room during a power failure and turned on the lights out of reflex? It’s not a reflex at all. The reliable presence of electrical power is a component of your mind geography. People and animals in our lives become part of it too, and their sudden removal changes things forever – but it doesn’t end them.”

As always, life in this interval of uncertainty, consciously recognized or not, was governed by,

“… the Tripod of Life that governs all living things faced with a change of environment:

1. Adapt in place;
2. Migrate; or
3. Die.
   

With the caveat that:

“Modern society is not Nature so much as it is an intellectual construct loosely based on Nature with the sharp edges rounded off for a price. Its inhabitants, though, are demonstrably resistant to domestication, their brains and instincts, though slowed through disuse, little different from their cave dwelling ancestors for whom choice of response to a threat was governed by flight, fight, or an end in sight (emphasis added). Applying the laws of man to limit those options can lead to nothing sustainable, and anyone who holds a position of such empowerment as to take the helm of such a ship of fools and believably steer her to the Promised Land had better keep that in the forefront of his lizard brain.” ~ Dark Sentiments Season 11 — Day 17: The New Normal

The moving target that is the “end in sight” component of this problem has been most particularly influential in its inspiration of The Great Beta Test, its foundational crack widening potential aided and abetted by a healthy dose of antepandemic publicity surrounding the “anti-vax movement”, and a persistent belief that COVID-19 is a hoax.

EPILOGUE

Pestilential unpleasantness is far from new to human history, but the evolving societal outcomes presenting in face of the present one hold promise of introducing the equally contagious toxicity of “chosenness” into an already toxic situation. More on this when we reconvene.